Dave
- Mar 19, 2020
- 3 min read

Romance on the Rails

Saturday morning brought me quite the dilemma.

Dave and I were dressing in retro-ish fashion during the two day train train which for men is so easy. Seriously, men get to throw on some appropriate style clothes and shoes, maybe add a few accessories and voila! Mostly period in appearance. Sure, women also have clothes and shoes as well but we wind up with more layers of clothing, our undergarments are different than modern lingerie (if you are trying for the right silhouette then the correct undergarments matter), the shoes will generally have some type of heel attached to widely varying and distinctive styles depending on what time frame you’re attempting and then there are the details. OMG the details. I was going for a 50ish look so there were gloves, scarves,belts, jewelry, hair and makeup.

As I laid in bed, thinking of how I should do my hair and makeup, trying to find the motivation to start the day I heard the siren song of this.

Coast Starlight - Hotel Monocco Bathroom

It was certainly designed for people shorter than me but ooohhhh man…it would be deep enough to allow me to be comfortably up to the top of my neck in hot water. Sadly, there was only enough time for one activity…soaking or attempting to look pretty.

True to form I chose soaking. So why did I bring my makeup bag? Optimism.

I like to believe I still looked mostly 50s ish and even somewhat fetching

Dave looked pretty good too

Fun on the tracks

As this was our reward weekend we treated ourselves to the sleeper car. What comes with the sleeper car you didn’t ask?

Hallway outside the sleeper rooms

A couch that folds into a bed

A seat opposite the couch that folds into one of two beds

An in room toilet with shower

A separate in room sink

Sleeper cars also come with all meals included but most importantly they come with privacy. How else is one supposed to have romance on the rails? Now, I have to be completely honest, while I totally recommend taking a train trip like this as overall it was fabulous, there was one stand out negative for me; the sleeping arrangements. The beds were very hard (and barely large enough for two people, even ones as close as Dave and I) which made sleeping difficult. I understand the necessity of why this is since there is a lack of space and both mattresses are stored on the top bunk when not in use but still. Fortunately, this was the only uncomfortable part of the trip. In what was a delightful surprise to me, Amtrak gets big kudos for their food service; they serve a mean steak along with other tasty offerings. A feat indeed when one considers they are using a small, mobile kitchen to feed the hungry horde.

Much like Seattle, the number of people onboard was small. It’s difficult to say if the lack of passengers was due to the fear of traveling with a pandemic looming or if it was merely an off season. Either way, there were just enough patrons on board to make the trip enjoyable without feeling claustrophobic. Given the low number of riders combined with our attire it’s not surprising that we were easily remembered by the train staff and some of the passengers.

Amtrak has this enjoyable custom of seating strangers together for meals. If your group has less than four in it, be prepared to have enough companions join your table to make a party of four. This is actually pretty fun as you get to meet new people almost every meal. Dave and I are a bit of introverts so the forced interaction was good for us.

The scenery along the Coast Starlight route is both stunning and a sad social commentary. The trees, streams and greenery of Oregon and Washington are spectacular. The rolling hills and vineyards of California are something to see. I was fascinated watching the different housing styles pass by along with so many other things. Regrettably, too often those other things also included trash lining the railroad tracks behind housing or city fences and homeless encampments.

How do you spend 35 hours on a train? We packed a number of items to help with this problem: e-books, movies, games, embroidery and so on. Interestingly we only played the games for a bit each day and watched the movies only after it was dark before pulling into the LA station. Most of our time was spent in the observation car looking out the windows or talking. We really needed this time together without any impending tasks or interruptions after the year we had.